Post-mortem: Soccer Breakthrough

I decided to write some kind of a post-mortem analysis for "Soccer Breakthrough" flash game we released around 21st of June to Newgrounds (and Kongregate).

Overall rating for the game has been 3+ stars at Newgrounds and 2+ stars at Kongregate. But there has been huge variation in ratings from different players: Some players have liked game a lot because of it's simplified gameplay and medal system. They even have encouraged us to continue same way with future games. But then there have been several comments concerning the lack of realism, the fact that game gets boring quick, most of the sounds are irritating (in fact, they are), and so on. I have even received direct requirements to change literally everything in the game. Yippee.


Soccer Breakthrough was originally intended to be a HTML5 game with very simple gameplay and simplified graphics. However, we had very tight schedule because of my holiday trip, and we decided to make this release with Stencyl because it was more familiar for me (=faster to finish a game). We never thought to be doing a realistic football game, but rather a small game where player has to dodge other objects in the screen. And for some reason we selected soccer theme, and the rest is history. :)

It seems that this game attracted mixed feelings and aroused deep feelings. I believe the reason was that there are strong emotions associated to the soccer, and some people are in the game so seriously that our version may seen even sacrilegious to them. But my opinion is that game that evokes wide range of feelings has achieved it's goal.

In fact, I had several improvement ideas for this game just before it was published, but I had no clue how to implement them smoothly to the existing frame. So I agree that in it's current form game is not as good as it could be. Anyways, I think at this point I am not going to change anything to the game. I will rather make the sequel (or two) for the game and take comments into account, if applicable.

In general, any feedback is good, so please keep on rating games you are playing! It helps a lot when drafting new game ideas.

And remember: if you do a football or soccer game, then do it properly! :)

-Jussi


Edit 2.7.2014: some minor fixes to the text. 

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